Customer Reviews

One Night Stand: Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 [Vinyl]

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After reading all the reviews, my wife bought me both the old and the new version of this CD, along with Peter Guralnik's new biography, "Dream Boogie," for the holidays. (I had the old version already on vinyl.) So I've had an opportunity to listen to both versions side by side.

It seems clear in the new version that the primary goal of the producer was to bring Sam Cooke's voice as far out in front of the mix as possible. The good news is that this goal is accomplished. The details of his voice are much more exposed, as if we were listening to the microphone closest to him, and one can indeed hear more -- his phrasing is clearer, the rawness is more noticable, even a few missteps are much more evident. (It sounds like he starts the wrong song at the beginning of Cupid, and then covers by stopping himself and talking to the audience. But the new version makes the muff, and his evident amusement, even more clear than the original.)

The bad news is that, as some reviews point out, making the lead vocal more prominent obscures the crowd at times and, less forgivably, King Curtis's saxophone and the rest of the band.

The easiest way of characterizing the difference between the two versions is that the original is probably closer to the way the show would have sounded if you had been in the audience at the back of the hall. The new version is what you would have heard at a mixing board through your headphones, turning Sam's mike all the way up. (Not that there was one necessarily at the time.)

Which one is better? The differences are subtle, and ultimately you can't go wrong with either -- this is an essential recording for any well rounded collection. For me, though, this recording is most valuable as a document of Sam Cooke's voice and live performing style, rather than his interaction with the crowd or what the band happened to be doing at the time. (You can find much better King Curtis recordings elsewhere anyway.) So I give the nod to the remastered version.

The original 'Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club' was the greatest live album of all time. Listening to it you feel jealous of everyone who was there. Never has a singer and and his band his audience been so in sync with each other. The crowd singalong with 'I love you for sentimental reasons' is as magical a recording as exists. The call and answer 'let me hear you say yeah!' on 'Bring it on home' is as exciting as music gets. No wonder the women in the audience are screaming to what sounds like the point of orgasm.

But this new mastered version takes all the audience vibes out. And it kills the amazingly hot sax counterpoints of King Curtis. Now it's just another CD. Man if aint broke don't fix it. But they did and they ruined it.

This remastering does a good job of accentuating the instruments and bringing the vocal more foreground but the audience is almost absent from this recording. If you want to hear the true power of this concert in all its glory buy the original copy.

This is the live album to outdo all other live albums. I am a head banging, rock and roller, guitar nut and this is still the best live album ever!

The main reason that it is great is b/c Sam Cooke works the audience. The cd builds up steam as the songs go by. This is a snowball rolling down a hill that gets bigger and bigger.

He talks to the audience, works the ladies, entices the men, pumps up his band, etc. The songs are almost a "best of" situation. Chain gang, having a party, twisting are all awesome!

You know how great the cd is? The recording has serious limitations. There are no highs and no lows. Horns, guitar, bass, drums are all mixed way towards the back but Cooke's singing and talking are way towards the front. It does not matter and should not influence anyone's listening pleasure.

A great comparison is to Otis Redding live at the Whiskey a Go Go. That is a good concert, fantastic sound recording and the band seriously rocks. This blows that away.

This is not only the best concert cd but also, it is obvious how other entertainers and djs modeled themselves afer Sam Cooke's style.

What a shame that this tremendous performer died in his prime.

Whoever reads this take note...I am no soul music fanatic. I am a Lez Zep. Who, Nirvana, guitarnut type of guy. THAT is how powerful that this work is b/c it most definetly rocks more than "live at leeds", "get your ya yas out", "Song remains the same", etc.

I became an even bigger fan of Sam Cooke fan than I already was because of his live album 'At The Harlem Square Club' because it showed him as he really was. It is more a gospel album but with secular tunes. It's one of the few albums that after five years I still enjoy listening to and I was delighted to read that there was a new reissue. However, it is a dissappointment.

Let's start with the reasons why this edition is better: first of all the artwork is very nice. A new front, more text and one of those neat cardboard covers, not the plastic case. The CD itself also looks great, as an old record. It also has a longer introduction and the final song 'Having A Party' has two minutes added. The sound does sound clearer, especially the guitars.

Here are the reasons why should look for the older edition
1. somehow the audience is mixed to the back. One thing what makes this album so great is the old gospel style call and answer with the audience, however they are sometimes hardly noticable on Feel It and Chain Gang.
2. Bring It On Home To Me in this live version is in my view the best Sam recording of all time. What especially makes it so great is the long 2 minute introduction where he tells the audience a story with Clif White's shivering guitar on the background. As a preacher he brings the audience slowly to an orgasmic highpoint when the opening notes of the Bring it on Home riff are being played. As in point number 1 unfortunately you can hardly hear the audience answer his pleas. However, it's now impossible to listen to these two things combined. The intro is now the outro of the preceding song and the song itself starts with the opening notes.
3. On the 'original' edition a saxophone can really be heard, I only hear it now because I know it's there.

So please look for the original CD! it's also part of the Man Who Invented Soul Box but there is suffers from the same bad mixing as here. So get the original and put in this case.

I can't believe they released this in this way. I am still hoping they can find a way to combine the two version so we can truely have a great album.

Rod Stewart calls this disc "one of my favorite live recordings of all time". Critics have been raving about it for years. And so when RCA released a completely redesigned and remastered version of this performance in the Fall of 2005 I simply could not resist. "One Night Stand!: Sam Cooke Live At The Harlam Square Club" delivers one of the most memorable "live" performances I have ever heard.
When a good friend of my introduced to me to the earlier 1990 RCA release of this concert I was simply blown away. It was not at all what I expected. I had only seen a couple of black and white clips of Sam Cooke performing on network TV shows in the late 50's and early 1960's. As I recall he appeared to be rather stiff and altogether forgettable. "Live At The Harlem Square Club" totally changed my perception of Sam Cooke as a performer. When this concert was recorded in 1963, Sam was in the midst of a tour with the legendary and dynamic saxophone player King Curtis. In fact, you can hear King Curtis' handiwork throughout this performance. And Oh Boy!!!
Sam Cooke gives one of the most memorable vocal performances you will ever hear! Although this performance was relatively short (just 38 minutes)you will marvel at his vocal prowess on tunes like "For Sentimental Reasons", "Bring It On Home To Me" and his 1962 hit "Nothing Can Change This Love". For me the highlight of this disc is Sam's incredibly energetic rendition of "Twistin' The Night Away". And he wraps it all up with an all-time favorite "Having A Party". Listen for the remarkable interaction between artist and audience that is readily apparent throughout this disc. That sort of intimacy has been lost in this era of arena and stadium concerts.
"One Night Stand!: Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club" comes in a beautifully designed package that includes a generous 14 pages of liner notes by Peter Guralnick who is a noted authority on Sam Cooke. In fact, Peter has recently written a biography of Sam entitled "Dream Boogie: The Biography of Sam Cooke." The fact that the disc is a mere 38 minutes long is a bit of a drawback as fans lament the fact that so many of Sam's great hits were not included in the performance. Very frustrating! Also, I have noted that a few of the other reviewers are critical of the remastering job. I must admit that I was not overly impressed with the remastering but since I do not own the earlier incarnation of this one I have nothing to compare it to. In any event it appears that the 1990 version is no longer available. Suffice to say you will certainly not be dissappointed with the music offered here. It is a glimpse of a major talent who died all too soon under mysterious circumstances from a gunshot wound in 1964.
An essential disc. Highly recommended!

After reading the below reviews, it appears the original LP version was better. But since I have not heard that record, I'll go with what I have and it's this tremendous live CD. Yeah, some of the sound could be better and so forth, but it really, really captures the night club feel (apparently the LP did even more so).

This is a side of Sam I hadn't heard. I have many of his hits packages and his smooth work and apparently his "Live at the Copa" CD has a polished lounge club type feel. Not this. "Harlem Square Club" is party central! It's Sam being gritty, raspy, and getting into it -- and man, I love that laugh!

Even if it's not remastered like the experts want here, giving this three stars or less is an insult and will steer people away from this legendary singer and to something worse. We should be encouraging people to buy Sam Cooke, not take them away from it.

This is a get down, party, have fun album! Who cares if the fifth cymbal isn't up to snuff -- I didn't notice. This makes you get up and get down!

Sam at his best.

Of course there is no such thing as a bad Sam Cooke recording. That is about as rare as a good idea from G.W. Bush! But I digress. I have the original cd "Live at the Harlem Square Club 1963," and admittedly, this is an improvement over the murky sound of that recording (this cover is a lot more attractive too, designed to simulate how it was probably intended to look had RCA released it in 1963 instead of 1985 when it finally came out). Plus, since that was originally on an album, I'm sure that the trimming of some songs was necessary. So if you have the original, it's worth it to get this anyway. The extended versions are mind blowing!

Now for the contents. This is an amazing recording of Sam au natural live and sermonizing in a Miami ghetto juke joint on January 12, 1963. He is truly in his element here! He whips the crowd into a frenzy when he gets ready and soothes them like a master when he is in the mood. Everything is clearer.

I would have to disagree slightly with an earlier reviewer about the sound of the audience. I hear the crowd loud and clear, especially during what is to me this cd's best moments. When Sam gets the audience to sing along with him on "Bring it On Home to Me," "For Sentimental Reasons," and "Having a Party," there is a truly communal feeling and mutual bonding with Sam and his audience that is really touching. Aside from rare exceptions such as Alicia Keys' recent "Unplugged" Cd, you rarely hear this kind of vibe on modern live recordings or even see it at concerts anymore.

But enough said, since this is a limited release, suffice it to say-GET IT WHILE YOU CAN!

Rca/BMG is a strange company - they earned billions of dollars on Elvis and they still screwed almost all Elvis album reisuess with bad mixing and mastering. So, why would Sam Cooke be an exeption?
Sound on this cd causes me a headache. A very good and exciting show of one of the greatest singers in popular music history unfortunately is very painfull to listen to.
Bad mix, that's all - there is so many high level tones that i have to put the treble button on my reciever to zero. Up front in the mix are very, very loud cymbals (my god, it's noisy), Sam voice and flat bass. Audience, sax, gitars? Forget it..
People at RCA/BMG are without any musical ear or they are completely deaf. Or maybe they just don't care.

Sam Cooke was one phenomenal singer. But not only did he sing like no other, he also wrote most of his hits, virtually ran his own recording sessions and had his own company. He could make that voice glide and soar and do loop de loops before making a clean landing. And unlike today's singers who want to blow you away by fiddling around with notes in such a self serving manner (not the song's) that all their tricks add up to nothing but vocal masterbation, Sam found areas to fly around in while never leaving the song behind. He's been my favorite singer for more years than I can rembember. However there was a time way back when his music hit a snag with me for awhile. Too lightweight, too cute, too... before soul, you know what I mean. I became hip to the fact that there was a live album on RCA, long out of print, that I had to track down. Surely, Sam Cooke "live" in front of an audience would reveal something else that was lurking underneath all those pop hits. Something that occasionally shone through in a phrase or note here and there. Something a little more gritty, a little more soulful, something less polite and sweet. It took a few years but I finally got my hands on SAM COOKE LIVE AT THE COPA (this was before the advent of the cd, and reissue-heaven). I put the needle down. My jaw dropped and my heart sank. I knew Sam straddled the teen/adult market in the early days of rock n roll, when an artist was either in one camp or the other. And that back then the Copa crowd was strictly for the "grown-ups" who belonged to the big band era sound of the '40's. And here was Sam, doin' "Bill Bailey" "The Tennessee Waltz" and "The Best things in Life are Free". Oh sure, he snuck in "You Send Me" and "Sentimental Reasons"(as part of a medley), managed to do a full version of "Twistin' The Night Away" and even dared to bring the folkie protest movement onstage with the then relatively new "Blowin in the Wind" and "If I Had a Hammer", the two most radical numbers of his set for this crowd. But it was clear his show never strayed too far from the supper-club formula of the time. Not that there's anything wrong with that per se. I just always believed that an audience really wants to see an artist do what HE does best. That thing that makes someone special. This was not the Sam Cooke I had envisioned, maybe I was hoping for something that didn't exist. With profound dissappointment, I put the album away and started losing interest in Sam Cooke. Fast foward a few years to the mid 80's and RCA releases something called LIVE AT THE HARLEM CLUB 1963. The words HARLEM CLUB got my attention and stirred my curiosity. Harlem Club 1963 surely meant an all-black audience for those days. I wondered, would this recording reveal the Sam Cooke I always thought existed? Could this be....? I bought the Lp, went home, dropped the needle down and anxiously listened. My jaw dropped and my senses soared. Here he was, IS, soulful, GRITTY, sweatin up a storm, steppin' out of his "Eisenhower" threads, crooning, RASPING his way through songs, HIS songs. Talkin', testifying, workin' the crowd, laughing & joking around like he was the greatest ENTERTAINER that ever was. (The only performer who I had ever seen do this "live" was Bruce Springsteen, who was never a great "singer" but a fantastic performer). But Sam is the whole package. And while you feel like you are there, it's not enough, you WISH that you were there. His voice here is silk and satin mixed with grown-up grit. Those wonderful, sweet G-rated hits now have a new ingredient, and it's a knowing R-rated attitude, no profanity, just a healthy sexual swagger permeating songs not only of the heart and mind, but of the body and soul as well. One of the greatest live albums ever recorded and a true portrait of the artist as a grown-up man. And RCA left this in the vaults for 20 YEARS!!!